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The ape did not stagger, did not roar.
It simply lost all motor function and all nerve conduction. It was a slack corpse before it flopped to the ground.
The six of them stood where they were, caught in postures of combat or flight, or lay as they had fallen. Staring at the nightmare creature they had just fought.
71
RIOT CAME OVER TO MORGIE and looked down at him. “You alive?”
He said, “Ughh.”
She pulled him roughly to his feet. Morgie stood swaying, clearly in pain. She checked him over for bites, found none, and then gave him a harsh two-handed push.
“Hey!” yelped Morgie. “What was that for?”
“For moving slower than cold dirt.”
“I didn’t have a chance,” he protested. “Did you see how fast that thing was?”
“Sure,” said Riot, “but you’re still slower than molasses in January. Could have got your dumb self chomped by a dead ape, which means you ain’t even as smart as a dead ape.” She turned away, no trace of good humor on her stern face. Morgie looked at her, and Benny could see that there was more hurt in his eyes than in his body. The cracks in the relationship between Morgie and Riot were getting deeper.
“Was anyone bit?” Nix asked.
“No,” said Benny, “but for the record, I will never sleep again.”
They gathered in a circle around the dead thing.
“Zombie silverback gorilla,” mused Chong. “Well, that’s something you just don’t see every day.”
“Don’t want to see one again,” said Nix with a shiver. She glanced around as if expecting the trees to be full of them.
Lilah knelt and touched it, prodding the skin, poking into the muscles. “Hasn’t been dead long,” she pronounced. “Day. Maybe two.”
“How’d it turn?” asked Morgie. “I thought it was only wild pigs.”
“You heard the same rumors we’ve been hearing, Morg,” said Benny.
“Sure, but I didn’t believe any of them.”
“Believe them now, genius?” said Riot. Morgie colored but said nothing.
The woods were very thick, the morning mist still masking what was around them. Chong turned away and squinted through the fog. “You know, guys, we kind of should have seen this coming.”
“How could we possibly expect a zombie gorilla?” asked Benny.
“Not that specifically,” replied Chong, “but something weird. I mean, think about it. Tom was the first one who warned us about thinking we know what’s out here. I remember his exact words. He said, ‘People in town refer to everything beyond the fence line as the great Rot and Ruin. We assume that it’s all nothing but a wasteland from our fence all the way to the Atlantic Ocean thr
ee thousand miles away.’ He said we can’t know for sure about anything.”
“Asheville’s in the east,” said Morgie.
“Sure, but think about what we know of Asheville. They turned it into a kind of kingdom. They protected thousands of acres of farmland and everyone pretty much lives inside the city. You’ve met plenty of soldiers and tech staff from there, Morgie. Can you remember any of them saying what was happening in Virginia, or Pennsylvania, or Maryland? No, because they’ve been so busy trying to create a safe place in Asheville that no one’s gone looking.”
“They would have told us if there were other zom animals. . . .”
“Would they? I mean, sure, if they knew, but America is huge. Something like four million square miles. All of Asheville, including all the farmland, is like sixty square miles. They don’t drive out here like we’re doing. They use helicopters.”
“They’d have seen something like this from the air.”
